{"id":593034,"date":"2026-04-08T08:27:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T08:27:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/593034\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T08:27:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T08:27:19","slug":"romanian-football-great-mircea-lucescu-dies-at-age-80","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/593034\/","title":{"rendered":"Romanian football great Mircea Lucescu dies at age 80"},"content":{"rendered":"

Mircea Lucescu, the Romanian football great and multiple trophy winner as a player and coach, has died at the age of 80.<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n

\"\"
\n ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n

Lucescu’s death was confirmed by Bucharest University Emergency Hospital on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

He had been hospitalised after reportedly suffering a heart attack on Friday morning.<\/p>\n

“Mr Mircea Lucescu was one of the most successful Romanian football coaches and players, the first to qualify the Romanian national team for a European Championship, in 1984,” the hospital said in a statement.<\/p>\n

“Entire generations of Romanians grew up with his image in their hearts, as a national symbol.”<\/p>\n

Lucescu had a lengthy coaching career and was in his second spell with the Romanian national team until stepping down last Thursday after falling ill during training.<\/p>\n

Three days earlier, Romania had missed out on qualification to the World Cup after losing to Turkey in a playoff.<\/p>\n

As a player, Lucescu captained his country at the 1970 World Cup.<\/p>\n

During a storied coaching career, he led Romania to the European Championship and managed teams across Europe, winning multiple titles.<\/p>\n

He returned to coach Romania after a 38-year gap to take part in the World Cup qualifiers.<\/p>\n

Additional sources \u2022 AP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mircea Lucescu, the Romanian football great and multiple trophy winner as a player and coach, has died at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":593035,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[563],"tags":[64,63,289551,13201,596,4119,289552,85,21418],"class_list":{"0":"post-593034","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-football","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-bucharest","11":"tag-fifa","12":"tag-football","13":"tag-kyiv","14":"tag-mircea-lucescu","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-world-cup"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593034","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=593034"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593034\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/593035"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593034"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593034"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593034"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}